Look, I made a Halloween thing! I spent most of September and October putting together RED MOON, a short horror story done in a graphic novel style, with some pretty cool animations and special effects for modern browsers. There’s an image-only “standard” edition for all devices, too. RED MOON is based on a short story I wrote when I was 19, and although the writing itself was pretty awful, I think it translated into a decent comic.

Much of the inspiration for the “enhanced” edition of RED MOON came from Matthew Bogart’s article “Why cartoonists might want to be William Castle.” Castle earned a reputation for shocking movie audiences (sometimes literally!) with staged effects and live stunts that made for a more immersive experience for moviegoers. With that in mind, I made a dubious 11th-hour choice to spend the last week experimenting with fancy-pants CSS 3 transitions and animations to enhance the comic. I’ll probably write a future post on the technical stuff (n.b.: there’s not a lot of technical wizardry and I cheated a lot).

Beyond that, it was a fun challenge to stretch my comic illustration chops and work outside that comfort zone. I have a new level of respect for the artists who can bang out multiple pages like these per day at a much higher quality.